The potential to collect brain data more directly, with higher resolution, and in greater amounts has heightened worries about mental and brain privacy. In order to manage the risks to individuals posed by these privacy challenges, some have suggested codifying new privacy rights, including a right to “mental privacy.” In this paper, we consider these arguments and conclude that while neurotechnologies do raise significant privacy concerns, such concerns are—at least for now—no different from those raised by other well-understood data collection (...) technologies, such as gene sequencing tools and online surveillance. To better understand the privacy stakes of brain data, we suggest the use of a conceptual framework from information ethics, Helen Nissenbaum’s “contextual integrity” theory. To illustrate the importance of context, we examine neurotechnologies and the information flows they produce in three familiar contexts—healthcare and medical research, criminal justice, and consumer marketing. We argue that by emphasizing what is distinct about brain privacy issues, rather than what they share with other data privacy concerns, risks weakening broader efforts to enact more robust privacy law and policy. (shrink)

Review. Cosmopolitanism, state sovereignty and international law and politics: a theory. Routledge, London and New York, 2023, pp. 216.

Education is a key factor for human development and social progress. However, in the context of capitalism, education is also influenced by economic inequalities and power structures. Scientific information selected through a critical review has identified the main theories and findings regarding education conceived within the capitalist model and inherent social mobility. The results demonstrate that in more egalitarian states, wage increases associated with education vary only slightly based on socioeconomic status. However, significant class disparities exist in states with moderate (...) to high levels of inequality. While some argue that education can be a tool for upward mobility, others emphasize how capitalism and pre-existing inequalities can limit such mobility. Understanding this relationship is crucial for addressing issues of equity and social justice in capitalist societies. (shrink)

There are many ways of interpreting the so-called new technologies. One of the most interesting is that which stems from defining them as a social imaginary, and therefore, as collective beliefs, fears and hopes. It is common to attribute to technologies all manner of threats that, founded or not, are real in the measure that the society makes decisions and acts in a way consistent with this conviction.The fears and anxieties of society lead to a consideration of the limits of (...) the human that technologies transgress. Among the figures with which one speaks about these limits there is Frankenstein, the modern Prometheus, which threatens modern fantasies with its deformity. There is, however, another man-made creature that can serve to orient our reflection, the Golem.In 1609, 400 years ago, Rabbi Loew died. He is credited with the creation of a homunculus by combining of secret codes. The problem of the Golem was its imperfect soul made manifest in its lack of speech. Its silent presence was a source of great fear in the community that finally asked to get rid of the creature.These figures of monstrosity, Frankenstein and above all Golem, will help us to make technologies understand from the fear that society projects onto them, and this will lead us to the question concerning the imaginary fears of the technological system. (shrink)

What is the relationship between impunity and economic and social rights? A substantiated expectation of impunity encourages the commission of acts that violate human rights. Using a logistic-multinomial regression model, we find that impunity affects per capita GDP, years of schooling, and life expectancy. An unexpected finding was that different civil and political rights systems, as diverse as those of Norway and Singapore, have similar impacts on both impunity and economic and social rights. Nonetheless, we need to focus on holistic (...) models that strive for protection of all human rights. (shrink)

Este trabajo explora los contactos entre la narrativa de los decadentes mexicanos y la ciencia, en especial la medicina y la antropología criminal. La hipótesis central es que de estas disciplinas científicas los decadentes absorbieron y reelaboraron artísticamente no meras nociones, sino valoraciones y códigos de representación de la realidad. Partiendo de presupuestos teóricos del análisis del discurso y centrándose en la figura de la prostituta, el artículo se aproxima a Alberto Leduc (1867-1908), en cuya obra se constata la apropiación (...) de un repertorio léxico, unas estrategias descriptivo-narrativas, unos tópicos y un modo de encuadrar la realidad propios del discurso de la ciencia, que él pone a dialogar con su sensibilidad modernista-decadente. (shrink)

Resenha do livro do mesmo título de Daniel Feierstein.

Daniel Ellsberg presented in Ellsberg (The Quarterly Journal of Economics 75:643–669, 1961) various examples questioning the thesis that decision making under uncertainty can be reduced to decision making under risk. These examples constitute one of the main challenges to the received view on the foundations of decision theory offered by Leonard Savage in Savage (1972). Craig Fox and Amos Tversky have, nevertheless, offered an indirect defense of Savage. They provided in Fox and Tversky (1995) an explanation of Ellsberg’s two-color (...) problem in terms of a psychological effect: ambiguity aversion . The ‘comparative ignorance’ hypothesis articulates how this effect works and explains why it is important to an understanding of the typical pattern of responses associated with Ellsberg’s two-color problem. In the first part of this article we challenge Fox and Tversky’s explanation. We present first an experiment that extends Ellsberg’s two-color problem where certain predictions of the comparative ignorance hypothesis are not confirmed. In addition the hypothesis seems unable to explain how the subjects resolve trade-offs between security and expected pay-off when vagueness is present. Ellsberg offered an explanation of the typical behavior elicited by his examples in terms of these trade-offs and in section three we offer a model of Ellsberg’s trade-offs. The model takes seriously the role of imprecise probabilities in explaining Ellsberg’s phenomenon. The so-called three-color problem was also considered in Fox and Tversky (1995). We argue that Fox and Tversky’s analysis of this case breaks a symmetry with their analysis of the two-color problem. We propose a unified treatment of both problems and we present a experiment that confirms our hypothesis. (shrink)

Daniel Ellsberg presented in Ellsberg various examples questioning the thesis that decision making under uncertainty can be reduced to decision making under risk. These examples constitute one of the main challenges to the received view on the foundations of decision theory offered by Leonard Savage in Savage. Craig Fox and Amos Tversky have, nevertheless, offered an indirect defense of Savage. They provided in Fox and Tversky an explanation of Ellsberg’s two-color problem in terms of a psychological effect: ambiguity aversion. (...) The ‘comparative ignorance’ hypothesis articulates how this effect works and explains why it is important to an understanding of the typical pattern of responses associated with Ellsberg’s two-color problem. In the first part of this article we challenge Fox and Tversky’s explanation. We present first an experiment that extends Ellsberg’s two-color problem where certain predictions of the comparative ignorance hypothesis are not confirmed. In addition the hypothesis seems unable to explain how the subjects resolve trade-offs between security and expected pay-off when vagueness is present. Ellsberg offered an explanation of the typical behavior elicited by his examples in terms of these trade-offs and in section three we offer a model of Ellsberg’s trade-offs. The model takes seriously the role of imprecise probabilities in explaining Ellsberg’s phenomenon. The so-called three-color problem was also considered in Fox and Tversky. We argue that Fox and Tversky’s analysis of this case breaks a symmetry with their analysis of the two-color problem. We propose a unified treatment of both problems and we present a experiment that confirms our hypothesis. (shrink)

In the eighteenth century the category of the aesthetic sought to bridge the gap between the prevalent dualities of Cartesian thought: art and science, history and science, prejudice and truth. This special issue of _boundary 2_ addresses current debates about the status of art in the context of global modernity. The range of arguments represented here cover a broad historical scope—from Cartesianism to present-day global modernity—of cultural discourse on the aesthetic to bring a focus to contemporary discussions of the corollary (...) concepts of beauty, virtue, taste, and truth. These essays present a rich and provocative account of the place of the aesthetic in late-twentieth-century culture. Included in this volume are considerations of the relation between theories of art and the avant-garde; art’s relation to cognition; the aesthetic as history; the aesthetic as a unique access to modernity; and its impact on problems of identity formation, ideology, and resistances to the institutional powers inherent in dominant social formations. _Contributors. _Charles Altieri, Peter Burger, David Carroll, Anthony J. Cascardi, Howard Caygill, Allen Dunn, Eric Gans, Agnes Heller, Ronald A. T. Judy, Marie-Rose Logan, Daniel T. O’Hara, Donald E. Pease, Alan Singer. (shrink)

Argentine historiography in general, and the history of the Argentine Left in particular, does not receive the attention it deserves in the Anglo-Saxon academic world, due to linguistic and cultural barriers. In this article, we attempt to review for the English-reading public three recent contributions to the history of Marxism in Argentina (Horacio Tarcus's Marx en la Argentina: Sus primeros lectores obreros, intelectuales y científicos, Hernán Camarero's A la conquista de la clase obrera: Los comunistas y el mundo del (...) trabajo en la Argentina, 1920–1935 and Osvaldo Coggiola's Historia del trotskismo en Argentina y América Latina) covering the entire historical spectrum from the early history of Argentine socialism to the history of the PCA and, finally, to the history of local Trotskyism. We attempt to place these works in the context of Argentine historiography and of the political context in which those books were written. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article studies multi-stakeholder initiatives as spaces for both deliberation and contestation between constituencies with competing discourses and disputed values, beliefs, and preferences. We review different theoretical perspectives on MSIs, which see them mainly as spaces to find solutions to market problems, as spaces of conflict and bargaining, or as spaces of consensus. In contrast, we build on a contestatory deliberative perspective, which gives equal value to both contestation and consensus. We identify four types of internal contestation which can be (...) present in MSIs—procedural, inclusiveness, epistemic, and ultimate-goal—and argue that embracing contestation and engaging in ongoing revision of provisional agreements, criteria, and goals can enhance the democratic quality of MSIs. Finally, we explore the implications of this perspective for theorizing about the democratic quality in MSIs and about the role of corporations in transnational governance. (shrink)

Background: Positioned at the frontlines of the battle against COVID-19 disease, nurses are at increased risk of contraction, yet as they feel obligated to provide care, they also experience ethical pressure. Research question and objectives: The study examined how Israeli nurses respond to ethical dilemmas and tension during the COVID-19 outbreak, and to what extent this is associated with their perceived risk and motivation to provide care? Research design: The study implemented a descriptive correlative study using a 53-section online questionnaire, (...) including 4 open-ended questions. Participants and research context: The questionnaire was complete by 231 registered and intern nurses after being posted on nurses’ Facebook and WhatsApp groups, and through snowball sampling. Ethical considerations: The research was pre-approved by the ethics committee of the Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences at the University of Haifa, Israel. Findings: In all, 68.8% of the respondents had received some form of training about COVID-19. Respondents positioned themselves at perceived high risk levels for contracting the virus. About one-third feared going to work because of potential contraction and due to feeling inadequately protected. While 40.9% were scared to care for COVID-19 patients, 74.7% did not believe they have the right to refuse to treat certain patients. When asked about defining an age limit for providing patients with scarce resources (such as ventilation machines) in cases of insufficient supplies, respondents stated that the maximum age in such scenarios should be 84 (standard deviation (SD = 19) – yet most respondents (81.4%) believed that every patient has the right to receive optimal treatment, regardless of their age and medical background. Discussion: Correlating with their strong commitment to care, nurses did not convey intention to leave the profession despite their stress, perceived risk, and feelings of insufficient support and protection at work. The nurses did not hold a utilitarian approach to resource allocation, thereby acknowledging the value of all people and their entitlement to care, regardless of optimal outcomes. Conclusion: While experiencing significant personal risk and emotional burden, nurses conveyed strong dedication to providing care, and did not regret working in the nursing profession, yet they did seek a supportive climate for their needs and ethical concerns. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A trivalent theory of indicative conditionals automatically enforces Stalnaker's thesis – the equation between probabilities of conditionals and conditional probabilities. This result holds because the trivalent semantics requires, for principled reasons, a modification of the ratio definition of conditional probability in order to accommodate the possibility of undefinedness. I explain how this modification is motivated and how it allows the trivalent semantics to avoid a number of well-known triviality results, in the process clarifying why these results hold for many (...) bivalent theories. In short, the slew of triviality results published in the last 40-odd years need not be viewed as an argument against Stalnaker's thesis: it can be construed instead as an argument for abandoning the bivalent requirement that indicative conditionals somehow be assigned a truth-value in worlds in which their antecedents are false. (shrink)

Predictive processing has recently been advanced as a global cognitive architecture for the brain. I argue that its commitments concerning the nature and format of cognitive representation are inadequate to account for two basic characteristics of conceptual thought: first, its generality—the fact that we can think and flexibly reason about phenomena at any level of spatial and temporal scale and abstraction; second, its rich compositionality—the specific way in which concepts productively combine to yield our thoughts. I consider two strategies for (...) avoiding these objections and I argue that both confront formidable challenges. (shrink)

This text focuses on the theory of popular politics constructed within the context of analytical Marxism, and asks if rational choice theory provides an adequate basis for explaining patterns of social, political and economic behaviour in traditional China.

On a Dreyfusian account performers choke when they reflect upon and interfere with established routines of purely embodied expertise. This basic explanation of choking remains popular even today and apparently enjoys empirical support. Its driving insight can be understood through the lens of diverse philosophical visions of the embodied basis of expertise. These range from accounts of embodied cognition that are ultra conservative with respect to representational theories of cognition to those that are more radically embodied. This paper provides an (...) account of the acquisition of embodied expertise, and explanation of the choking effect, from the most radically enactive, embodied perspective, spelling out some of its practical implications and addressing some possible philosophical challenges. Specifically, we propose: an explanation of how skills can be acquired on the basis of ecological dynamics; and a non-linear pedagogy that takes into account how contentful representations might scaffold skill acquisition from a radically enactive perspective. (shrink)

The essays in Part I of _Beyond Poststructuralism seek_ to demonstrate fallacies of structuralist and poststructuralist thought that remain potent even though the theoretical structures that led to their enunciation have lost much of their original influence. These fallacies include the idea that one must avoid the consideration of authorial intention; that meanings are undecidable; that there is no justification for seeking unity in a text; that all hierarchies of value are reversible; that history is no more than an open (...) contest among competing narrative constructions; and that the very nature of language makes the falsifiability of statements about human experience impossible. The essays in Part II suggest ways to bring literary study into closer relation with human experience of the world. Their authors emphasize the role of literature in providing new perspectives and broadening the range of available alternatives to what is threatening, unjust, fallacious, or absurd in social and cultural structures. Contributors are Bernard Bergonzi, John Holloway, Wendell V. Harris, A. D. Nuttall, Raymond Tallis, John Searle, Richard Levin, Robert Scholes, James Battersby, David Bromwich, Quentin Kraft, Michael Fischer, Charles Altieri, Christopher Clausen, Gayle Greene, André Lefevere, Daniel R. Schwarz, Virgil Nemoianu, and Martha Nussbaum. (shrink)

During the early nineteenth century the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, significantly increased the number of individuals it employed. One of the new roles created was the position of First Assistant, who oversaw the management of astronomical labor at the observatory. This article examines the contribution of Robert Main, who was the first person employed in this role. It shows that, through Robert Main’s duties and tasks, the observatory appears as a hybrid site embodying aspects of the other institutions that formed part (...) of its operational network. Moreover, it demonstrates that the transformation of the observatory during the nineteenth century was driven by his rigorous maintenance of discipline in relation to the daily operations of the site. (shrink)

Daniel Arelli, poeta e filósofo de Belo Horizonte, tem se destacado no cenário daliteratura brasileira contemporânea. Em entrevista concedida aos pesquisadores do projeto“Notícia da atual literatura brasileira: entrevistas”, que consiste em mapeamento da literaturabrasileira do início do século XXI a partir da perspectiva dos próprios escritores, o autordiscorre sobre seu processo de escrita criativa, comenta a relação entre filosofia e poesia, debateo problema da filosofia brasileira, avalia a recepção de sua obra e reflete sobre outras questõeséticas e estéticas.

In this eloquent book, Daniel Barenboim draws on his profound and uniquely influential engagement with music to argue for its central importance in our everyday lives.

In this paper, I am going to explore some of the moral considerations relating to smoking licences. And I shall offer a limited defence of licences as a replacement for sales tax on tobacco products. This defence will include some moral arguments in favour of one particular licence design over others.

Daniel Schwartz examines the views on friendship of the great medievalphilosopher Thomas Aquinas.

��People spent 5 min before sleep at home writing their stream of thought as they suppressed thoughts of a target person, thought of the person, or wrote freely after mentioning the person. These presleep references generally prompted people to report increased dreaming about the person. However, suppression instructions were particularly likely to have this in- fluence, increasing dreaming about the person as measured both by participants’ self-ratings of their dreams and by raters’ coding of mentions of the person in written (...) dream reports. This effect was observed regardless of emotional attraction to the person. (shrink)

It is a truism to say that we live in a world that has been deeply shaped by imperialism. The history of humanity is, in many ways, a story of the attempted and achieved subjugation of one people by another, and it is unsurprising that such interaction has had profound effects on the contemporary world, affecting cultural understandings of community identity; the composition of, and boundaries between, modern day states; and the distribution of resources between different communities. This chapter addresses (...) the claim that some contemporary states may possess obligations to pay reparations as a result of the lasting effects of a particular form of historic imperialism: colonialism. Claims about the harms and benefits caused by colonialism must make some kind of comparison between the world as it currently is, and a counterfactual state where the injustice which characterised so much of historic interaction between colonisers and the colonised did not occur. Rather than imagining a world where there was no such interaction, this chapter maintains that the appropriate counterfactual is one where relations between different communities were characterized by an absence of domination and exploitation. This means that current day states may possess reparative duties which are much more extensive than is often supposed. (shrink)

This paper introduces this special issue which is focused on its target paper - The Natural Origins of Content. The target paper has had a robust and considered set of fifteen replies; a literal A to Z of papers. This extended introduction explains the background thinking and challenges that motivated the target article's proposed research programme. It also provides a sneak peak preview and navigational aid to the special issue’s contents. Brief highlights of each commentary are provided and they are (...) grouped together under broad headings. We do not attempt to give detailed replies to these suggestions or answer the various critiques at this stage of the proceedings: that is for future work. (shrink)

The literature in semantics and pragmatics provides extensive evidence for the strengthening of linguistic expressions, both in matrix positions and when embedded under various operators. We study the properties of such strengthening using a very simple setting. Specifically, we look at when the expression “crate with a banana” can be understood as a unique crate even though two different crates have a banana in them. By varying the scenarios in which an expression such as “Pick the crate with a banana” (...) is evaluated, we show that the strengthening of “crate with a banana” within the scope of the definite article parallels the entailments of “crate with only a banana” (with an overt exhaustivity operator, ‘only’). We use this observation to argue that strengthening in embedded positions follows the logic of an exhaustivity operator rather than that of rational inference. We then note that a similar pattern obtains in matrix positions. (shrink)

The Declaration on Euthanasia (1980) defined euthanasia as “an action or an omission which of itself or by intention causes death, in order that all suffering may in this way be eliminated.” In Evangelium vitae (1995) Pope St. John Paul II defined “euthanasia in the strict sense” using exactly the same words, except that where the declaration has “of itself or [vel] by intention” the encyclical reads “of itself and [et] by intention.” This paper explores the significance of this change, (...) which has been largely ignored and has not been adopted by the Catechism or by the Ethical and Religious Directives. I argue for the superiority of the definition in the declaration. (shrink)